To do this project, you should be familiar with using 360° images or be willing to learn how.

This project requires the participation of volunteers. Make sure you are familiar with your science fair's rules about tests involving human volunteers before you start. For suggestions and common rules check out the Science Buddies resource Projects Involving Human Subjects.

Abstract

Are you convinced that virtual reality (VR) will soon become mainstream and improve our lives in unpredicted ways? Or maybe you believe it is a big hype doomed to fade and disappear. In this science project, you will use one aspect of VR—the headset—and investigate if it could convey reality better than traditional pictures or 360° images. You will go out and measure how people perceive pictures and images you took. Will people embrace the VR headset and what it can do or prefer a 360° image or classic pictures?

Objective

Take 360° images and pictures of public places and execute a survey to measure how people react to viewing images with a VR headset compared to viewing images on a phone.

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Credits

Sabine De Brabandere, PhD, Science Buddies

Google Cardboard™ is a registered trademark of Google, Inc.

Google Maps™ is a registered trademark of Google, Inc.

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General citation information is provided here. Be sure to check the formatting, including capitalization, for the method you are using and update your citation, as needed.

APA Style

De Brabandere, S.
(2018, March 15).
Do People Prefer Virtual Reality Headsets over 2D Pictures?
Retrieved from
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project-ideas/HumBeh_p060/human-behavior/do-people-prefer-virtual-reality-headsets-over-2d-pictures

Last edit date: 2018-03-15

Introduction

New technologies enter our world at a rapid pace. Some, like the smartphone, are adopted quickly and become mainstream in record time. Others, like virtual reality (VR), are around for decades before they experience a major breakthrough. Recent developments, like the VR apps for smartphones and inexpensive VR headsets, make VR more available than ever. Will people adopt it into every aspect of their lives? Will VR soon penetrate our houses, schools, and stores?

Let us quickly explore what VR is. Virtual reality creates the illusion that people are in one place doing one thing, while knowing they are somewhere else interacting with virtual reality equipment. These illusions are possible because experiences are created in the brain with the information received from our senses. Virtual reality equipment controls what we see, hear, feel, or even smell to create immersive experiences of virtual realities.

An interesting spinoff uses VR equipment, like the VR headset, to show real places. Although the headset is designed to provide a realistic visual experience of virtual places (like a video game environment), it can also convey a realistic, immersive impression of places that really exist. This sparks interesting applications that could improve our lives. Would tourist offices be able to convey a more realistic idea of what a place feels like using a VR headset and images taken at existing places? A survey where you observe how volunteers interact with a VR headset and the images might answer this question, and this is exactly what you will do in this science project. You will take a set of images and pictures of public places, go out and present them to volunteers in several formats, and register how they interact with them.

VR headsets require special images to create an immersive view of a place. They use 360° images, which capture everything around you, above you, and below you (note that this is different from a 360 panorama or panoramic image, which captures a large horizontal arc, which sometimes goes all around you, but does not capture what is above or below you). It is also called a photo sphere, as the result is easily projected on the inside of a sphere. Figure 2 shows two different ways to view a photo sphere on a smartphone screen.

Figure 2. (Top) An "unwrapped" photo sphere displayed as a single rectangular image on a phone's screen (think of this as trying to flatten an orange peel; the result is a distorted image). (Bottom) Apps like Google Maps™ allow you to "look around" inside the photo sphere, either by rotating the phone or by using your finger to swipe the screen. This particular image shows the area indicated by a dark frame in the "unwrapped" photo sphere.

VR apps add two important features to a photo sphere. They use the phone's built-in sensors to determine the orientation of the phone (which way it is pointing). When you place the phone in a VR headset, this allows you to look up, down, left, right, or turn around and see what you would see standing on the spot where the 360° image was taken. In addition, these apps display two images, one for each eye. These images are slightly different and mimic how your eyes, being separated by your nose, see a scene slightly differently. This technique, called stereoscopy, creates depth perception. Figure 3 shows how the photo sphere from Figure 2 is displayed by a VR app.

Figure 3. The photo sphere from Figure 2 now displayed on a smartphone with a virtual reality app.

360° images are easy to take with smartphone apps and easy to view on your phone or with a VR app and headset. This makes them readily available to everyone with a smartphone, including you for this science project. Curious to find out if your volunteers will spend more time watching the pictures than the 360° images? Will they love or be averse to the headset? Go out and take some pictures, create the survey, and find out!

Terms and Concepts

Virtual reality (VR)

VR apps

Smartphone

VR Headset

Survey

360° image

Photo sphere

Questions

What is VR? Can you find areas where it could improve our lives and identify some dangers?

Can you identify the major differences between the following two survey techniques?

A survey where you ask people questions on how they would like a VR headset.

A survey where you observe volunteers use of a VR headset.

Which one do you expect to give you the most predictive power?

How can a survey like the one suggested in this Project Idea be beneficial to companies thinking of implementing VR headsets or 360° images in their advertisements?

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Materials and Equipment

Smartphone with internet access; note that some older devices may not be compatible with VR headsets or the apps required to do this project.

Google Cardboard headset; available from
Amazon.com. You can use other virtual reality headsets for the project. Note that the findings might depend on the type of headset you use, as quality and user friendliness could influence whether people prefer the VR experience over viewing pictures or photo spheres on a phone.

A "test panel" of 8–10 adult volunteers, or 8–10 young adults and child volunteers

Experimental Procedure

Working with Human Test Subjects

There are special considerations when designing an experiment involving human subjects.
Fairs affiliated with Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) often
require an Informed Consent Form (permission sheet) for every participant who is
questioned. Consult the rules and regulations of the science fair that you are entering,
prior to performing experiments or surveys. Please refer to the Science Buddies
documents
Projects Involving Human Subjects and
Scientific Review Committee for additional important requirements. If
you are working with minors, you must get advance permission from the children's
parents or guardians (and teachers if you are performing the test while they are
in school) to make sure that it is all right for the children to participate in
the science fair project. Here are suggested guidelines for obtaining permission
for working with minors:

Write a clear description of your science fair project, what you are studying,
and what you hope to learn. Include how the child will be tested. Include a paragraph
where you get a parent's or guardian's and/or teacher's signature.

Print out as many copies as you need for each child you will be surveying.

Pass out the permission sheet to the children or to the teachers of the children
to give to the parents. You must have permission for all the children in order to
be able to use them as test subjects.

Creating a Library of Pictures

For this project, you will need at least two sets of pictures to show to your volunteers. Each set will contain a photo sphere of the place and eight individual pictures taken from the same spot. If you would like, you can collect more sets.

Since there is an ever-changing variety of phones, apps, and VR headsets, we cannot provide specific instructions for this section. We do provide pointers on how to take photo spheres and view them using the VR headset. An internet search on your specific device or headset can lead you to more specific instructions, and do not hesitate to ask an adult or friend for help if you have trouble.

Find and download an app for your phone that allows you to take a photo sphere. Note that a panoramic photo is not identical to a photo sphere or a 360° image. Check out the Introduction if you are unsure about the differences.

Try out the app. Can you take a photo sphere of your workspace or yard and save the photo sphere on your phone?

Try to view the photo sphere on your phone and swipe to look around. Note that some phones might require other ways to look around a photo sphere, like tilting the phone.

Try to view the photo sphere with the VR headset and move your head to look around.

For example, on an Android phone, you could:

Download the Google Camera app to take a photo sphere.

Download the Google Cardboard app to view the photo sphere on your phone or with the VR headset.

For iPhones, you could, for example:

Download the Sphere app to create a photo sphere.

Download the Google Maps app and load the photo sphere to the Google Maps -Private Collection. There, you can view it on your phone or with the VR headset.

Figure 5. The same photo sphere, displayed so you can swipe through the photo sphere (left) and view it with a virtual reality headset (right).

Pick a tranquil space. Moving objects or people will make it difficult to take a high-quality photo sphere.

Opt for spaces that have something interesting to depict, or can bring about a feeling like excitement (such as a fair or unusual playground), curiosity (such as a museum exhibit), or serenity (such as an impressive landscape).

If possible, select places that are probably new to your volunteers.

Figure 6. An example photo sphere taken at a museum.

Create a photo collection: 1 photo sphere and 8 regular pictures of each selected place. Add 1 photo sphere of a different place to show your volunteers as an example.

Go to the selected places, one at a time, and perform the following routine. Do not forget to check your phone battery before you leave; taking photo spheres can use a lot of battery.

Position yourself at a spot where there is something interesting all around you, not just in front of you.

Wait for a moment when there is little to no movement around you.

Take a photo sphere. Give the photo sphere a clear name and save it on your phone.

Take a set of eight 2D (regular) pictures, covering the 360° around you. Do this by rotating 45° between consecutive pictures. Give the pictures clear names, so you can easily retrieve them later.

Quickly check the quality of your photo sphere and pictures. If in doubt, retake. It could save you an extra trip!

Note the example photo sphere could be from anything except the places you selected to use in your survey. This example will be used to explain volunteers how to use a photo sphere.

Figure 7. A collection of 1 photo sphere and 8 regular pictures taken at a public park.

Evaluate your photo collection: are you pleased? If not, go back and retake a new set.

Preparing and Performing the Survey

Before you go out and see how people respond to your pictures, you need to set up a clear plan for how and what kind of data you would like to collect. This section will help you collect good data. Check out the Science Buddies reference Designing a Survey if you need more help setting up your survey.

The time spent with each specific format (eight individual 2D pictures shown on the phone, the photo sphere shown on the phone where they can look around, and the photo sphere viewed with the virtual reality headset). A time measurement is a well-defined, indicative, and a quantitative variable.

The expressed preference of the volunteers, collected as answers to the following two questions:

Which format do you feel gave you the best sense of what it would be like to be there?

If I were to present you with more interesting pictures, in which format would you prefer to view them?

The answers to these questions will provide a more subjective measure of the volunteers' preferences.

Two words to describe their experience with each format. Although words cannot be analyzed easily, it is a nice tool to collect volunteers' impressions. As preparation, creating a word-list for volunteers to pick from. An example could be: Wow, Impressive, Unnatural, Poor, Basic, Dull, Great Concept, Boring, Realistic, Simple, Fun, Impressive, Ordinary, Extraordinary, Hype, Awful, Dizziness-inducing, Awkward, Funny, Pleasant, Nice, Strange, Plain, Un-sharp. Be sure not to bias your volunteers by your word choices. Choose a similar number of "positive" to "negative" words.

Whether or not the volunteer is familiar with a VR headset (abbreviated as "Familiar with VR") or comfortable with viewing regular pictures on a smartphone (abbreviated as "Comfortable using a smartphone"). This information allows you to look for trends influenced by familiarity with VR or technology.

Note: If you are interested in other trends, substitute these variables by others that can highlight your hypothetical trend.

Create data tables in which to record your survey data.
Copy Table 1 and Table 2 in your lab notebook.

Id

Set A

Set B

Format for Best Experience

Future Preferred Format

Format

2D Pictures

Photo Sphere(Phone Only)

Photo Sphere(VR Headset)

2D Pictures

Photo Sphere(Phone Only)

Photo Sphere(VR Headset)

1

Sequence

Time (s)

2

Sequence

Time (s)

...

Sequence

Time (s)

10

Sequence

Time (s)

Table 1. Table in which to record how much time a volunteer spends viewing a picture in a specific format (expressed in seconds), as well as the sequence in which the pictures were presented. The last two columns collect the volunteers' preferences.

Id

2D Pictures

Photo Sphere (Phone Only)

Photo Sphere (VR Headset)

Familiar with VR

Comfortable Using a Smartphone

1

2

...

10

Table 2. Table in which to collect the words selected to describe the volunteers' experiences with the different formats, as well as whether or not the volunteers are familiar with VR and with viewing pictures on a smartphone (referred to as "Comfortable using a smartphone").

Determine the order in which you will show the photo sets and formats for each participant before you start your survey. To eliminate potential bias, the order needs to be randomized.

Flip a coin to decide whether to show photo set A or B first for a volunteer. Heads indicates Set A will be shown first. Tails indicates Set B will be shown first.

Draw a paper out of a hat (or roll a die) to decide the order in which you will let the volunteer experience the three formats for that set: Pictures, Photo Sphere, or Headset.

In the sequence row, fill in a 1 for the set chosen in step 3.a. and the format drawn first in step 3.b. Fill in a 2 for the same set but the second format picked in step 3.b., and a 3 for the last format for that set.

Put all three papers back in the hat to decide the order in which you will let volunteers experience the three formats for the other set.

In the sequence row, fill in a 4 for the set not chosen in step 3.a. and the format drawn first in step 3.d. Fill in a 5 for the second format picked in step 3.d., and a 6 for the last format.

Table 3 shows example of how this might look like for Volunteer 1.

Id

Set A

Set B

Format for Best Experience

Future Preferred Format

Format

2D Pictures

Photo Sphere(Phone Only)

Photo Sphere(VR Headset)

2D Pictures

Photo Sphere(Phone Only)

Photo Sphere(VR Headset)

1

Sequence

4

6

5

2

1

3

Time (s)

Table 3. Example table where the sequence in which to show the photo sets and the formats has been filled in for 1 volunteer.

Pen and the lab notebook with the two data tables you prepared in step 2.

A timer. Note that you will be using your phone to show the pictures. It will not be available as timer.

Explain to volunteers that you will show them a set of pictures and time how long they spend looking at the pictures, then you will ask them a few questions about their experience.

Note: Restrict yourself to adults or young adults and children. As explained in the Variations, the test results might show significant differences for adults compared to young adults and children, and combining them might average out interesting differences.

Ask if the volunteer is familiar with viewing pictures on the phone, viewing a photo sphere on a phone, and using a VR headset. If not, show them how to view a set of regular pictures on your phone and take a moment to practice with other pictures and your extra photo sphere. Allow them to play with the VR headset for a maximum of 5 minutes.

Discreetly fill in the boxes "Familiar with VR" and "Comfortable using a smartphone" for this volunteer. For this project, you can classify your volunteer as "Familiar with VR" if he/she is familiar with a VR headset and "Comfortable using a smartphone" if she or he is comfortable with viewing regular pictures or a photo sphere on a smartphone.

Show the volunteer the pictures in the sequence prescribed in your data table like Table 1 of step 2. Time how long they spend watching each set and format and write down your measurements.

When you show the eight regular pictures, explain they can swipe around the set of eight pictures at will.

Start the timer when your volunteer starts looking at the pictures.

Ask your volunteer to hand back the phone when they are done looking. This is a clear signal for you to stop the timer.

Ask your volunteer to ignore any external distractions and focus on looking at the pictures when they have the phone. If a volunteer is clearly distracted by outside events for a significant amount of time while watching the pictures, disregard this set of measurements.

Record the answers to the questions:

Which format do you feel gave you the best sense of what it would be like to be there?

If I would present you with more interesting pictures, which format would you prefer to look at them?

Show the volunteer the list of words you prepared in section c of step 1 and ask them to pick two for each format that best represent their experience with that format.

At least 8–10 volunteers are needed. More will provide more-accurate data and allow you to make more convincing conclusions. The resource Sample Size: How Many Survey Participants Do I Need? can help you determine how many volunteers you should include in your study.

Analyzing the Data

You might have noticed specific tendencies while performing the survey. This section will help you represent your data in a scientific way and communicate tendencies clearly with your audience.

Create a table like Table 4, calculate and fill in the requested average times for each volunteer. Note that the last row asks for the average over all volunteers. The last four columns are copies of your data collection table. Adding it might help you detect patterns.

Id

Average Time Spent (s)

Format for Best Experience

Future Preferred Format

Familiar with VR

Comfortable Using a Smartphone

2D Pictures

Photo Sphere (Phone Only)

Photo Sphere (VR Headset)

1

2

...

10

Overall Average

Table 4. Table in which to record the average time spent for each format, as well as the preferences and background knowledge of each volunteer.

Consolidate the expressed preferences in a table like Table 5.

Number of volunteers choosing this format out of the ... volunteers tested.

2D Pictures

Photo Sphere (Phone Only)

Photo Sphere (VR Headset)

Format for Best Experience

Future Preferred Format

Spending the Most Time

Table 5. Table in which to record number of volunteers choosing a particular format as 'providing the best sense of what it would be like to be there', as 'their preferred format for future viewings,' and where they spent the most time viewing. Do not forget to fill in the total number of volunteers tested in the title of the table.

Do your volunteers, on average, spend more time on one particular format?

Do you see a particular format or a combination of two formats being the preferred format(s) for future viewings?

Is your data suggesting that volunteers find a specific format or a selection of two formats better suited to provide them with a sense of what it would be like to be there?

Are the answers to questions a, b, and c the same, or are different formats selected for different aspects?

Do you have the impression that 'Being comfortable using a smartphone' or 'VR familiarity' changes the patterns found in the overall population? Do you have a big enough sample from which to draw conclusions for this sub-group, or is additional data needed to confirm or refute your new hypothesis?

If you like this project, you might enjoy exploring these related careers:

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Variations

This science project involves you selecting adult volunteers or young adults and children. An interesting variation is to take a big enough sample of adults as well as younger volunteers and compare the findings. Would younger people be more inclined to endorse new technology? Would they be more forgiving to small imperfections?

This science project studies how people perceive public spaces. If you are wondering if people feel more comfortable renting or buying a house when being presented with pictures viewed in one of the three studied formats, perform the experiment with a set of indoor places like staged houses (with permission).

Videos are increasingly more common. Can you study how viewing an image with a VR headset performs compared to viewing a video for specific goals, like getting kids excited about an amusement park, museum, or field trip. Note that this variation is more complicated. Think carefully about how you can control for different items shown in the video with respect to the single image, as well as the length of the video.

Virtual reality headsets are designed to provide you with a realistic three-dimensional (3D) view, which might increase depth perception. Could you set up a survey to find out if people are better at perceiving the size of a room or the distance of an object when viewing a photo sphere with the VR headset compared to when viewing the same photo sphere and/or a set of pictures on the phone?

Would the immersive-ness provided by VR headsets help people remember a visual image better? Can you set up a survey to provide an answer to this question?

Can you find out if people detect more details when viewing an image with a VR headset compared to viewing the image in a different form?

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